Shell Shock
by Sumhope
Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming. Katara POV. Post Sozins Comet. AU
1. Prison

**AN: **This story is AU and post Sozins Comet. Aang did not defeat the firelord. Katara, shattered and broken by the realization of her worst fears, has disappeared in a reality of her own making. This is the story of her re-emergence.

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**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**Prison**

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I grin widely, lips chapped and cracking as they stretch over my teeth. _Back home, at last._ I am back home.

A laugh bubbles up inside me and and I shake with silent laughter. My shaking makes a sound, the hollow clunk of metal on metal. I admire the gleam of grey circling my ankle.

The floor is cold and hard beneath my hand and I wonder briefly why there are no furs, why home looks empty and bare. Why is the door flap grey and still? And the small window with bars, _there was never bars before... was there?_

The thought disturbs and I cast it from my mind easily. For the briefest moment there was something desperate and screaming in me, _at me_, irrational and crazy and wrong. I focusing instead on this, on being home. I let the knowing soothe my ruffled senses.

I poke at the dried flecks of blood on my ankle with a detached sort of curiosity. My fingernail thunks hollowly against the metal_. _

_PLUNK... PLUNK, PLUNK, PLUNK..._


	2. Secrets

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**Secrets**

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For a long while he does nothing but stand there. Looking at me. Trying to know my secrets.

Like the flies... how they crunch underneath my fingers, make black wet trails on the wall. There are the grooves in the corner in the dark, scratches in the floor that my fingers trace over and over _and over_. And Rat, her furry warmth, her sharp teeth, her tail against my leg, the green and purple of her organs, ocher of muscles, the white of her skull beneath. _I flex my hand in the moonlight spreading my fingers wide, see how Rat pools on the floor, how warm and throbbing she is, wipe the wide slow tears from my cheeks. _But no one knows my secrets but me.

He isn't like the others. He doesn't touch me, only holds out his hand. Says my name.

_Katara?_

There is an old scar on his palm just below his thumb curving in like a crescant moon.

I can see him when he was seven winters standing before my father; remember how he had stammered and how the tips of his ears had glowed red with embarassment as he held out his palm to show the fishing hooks stuck in his hand.

_...his thumb!, something in me insists. _

But I ignore it. _He is who I want him to be._ He is Sokka.

His fingers tighten around mine and brings me to my feet. _Turns toward the door._

I panic. Fight to get free.

I don't want to leave my home! Even the voices, the ones who whispered escape _insist dark impossible lies_, even they agree.

Just like all the rest he is stronger than me, dragging me along. The panic is so overwhelming, so great that I am pleading, almost begging. _No... I don't want to go... no, no, nononono..._

_Please Sokka... NO!_

His eyes widen and his fingers fall from my wrist.

I force a smile to my lips and into my eyes and give him an empty promise. _I'll go with fishing with you another time, just not now. _

He reaches for me again and ignores how I scream, how I pound my fists against his back. His armor digs into my stomache and drives the air from me.

_His hair smells like smoke, like ash. _


	3. Forward

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**Forward **

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There is heat and noise and people eveywhere. So many people. A sea of eyes that stare at me.

I want to hide. I want to disapear into the ground. I want to crawl back into that room of cold bare walls and shut the door forever.

Sweat rolls down my back, dots my lip, wets my palms.

Sunlight glints off the gold off the procession, glints off the the brass of the horses tack, glints off the mens gold plated armor. Blinds me.

His fingers are hard, tightening around my wrist, right above the curve of steel. The links are heavy on my wrists, heavy around my waist, dragging at my ankles. Exhaustion weighs at me, steals the strenght from my bones. I wish to rest, to sleep, _to stop everything_. But his lips are a tight line across his silent face so my feet move on, shuffling forward, taking me to the unknown.

My mind writhes, a trembling fleshy mass.


	4. Ship

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**Ship**

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The wind howls, screaming its anger against the metal hull. Despite the roar of engines and the smell of sulfur in the air I know that it is winter.

But I wonder why there is no snow, no icicles to creep through the door into our igloo? The ground rolls, heaving underneath. The world tips all around me.

Sokka brings me food. Forces me to eat. It is spicy and unfamiliar, stinging my tongue and burning my throat.

I want to smile and laugh and ask him why there are no stewed sea prunes. _I want things to go back to the way they were._ But the look on his face always stops me.

A look like the world is pressing in and there is no escape.

_You know that look..._ the voices whisper. I shut my ears, close my eyes on them. Heat gathers behind my eyelids, spirals to my head, pricks at my fingertips.

I let the rolling motion soothe me. I imagine blue, choppy seas. I gather the blankets around me, burrow in their heat and let sleep do what I cannot.

Only when sleep comes is my mind finally quiet.


	5. North

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**North**

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There is land, and sea, and sky at last. A sky that is as wide as it is blue.

The voices _whisper_ that it is my sky, that I rose through its depths and looked down on the world below. But I am a child of the ocean, of the tide, and of the moon. _Am I not?_

There is the great wall of the city, the lower streets and the high ground of the court and palace. It is just like I remember. _No, not like I remember_. Less ice more steel. Colors that don't belong. Foreign sounds and slush of soot against my feet.

We pass over bridge and thru the lower streets until we just meet the beginning of the top levels. He stops at one of the dwellings and tugs me forward. I let him draw me in despite how the voices warn ..._lies, it is all lies._

There is ornate carvings in the ice beneath our feet, a great iron chest and a swath of red against the wall.

The red enrages _them_. Makes them scream inside me until my skull swells, threatening to breakthrough the very skin of me. Threatens to crack the insides of me.

_Fear, terror, hate... it makes us feel. _

My fingers trace the delicate gold threads flaming out against the red. They are smooth and cool beneath my touch. All I can see is my mother, my father, my brother _burning_. All I can remember is the way his skin was blackened, charred, all raw edges and bits of etched blue.

My hand spasms. Ripping. Tearing. Until I am gouging into the flag with my nails, a terrible desperation driving me until even my vision is blurred.

He pulls me away. Holds me even as my fingers scratch him, drawing more red. Waits until I am finally still with only the sound of my gasps between us.

I wonder that there are tears on my cheeks, and an ache in my chest. I taste the sea melting on my lips.

That night I dream of a small boy with a wide smile and truth in his eyes. His spine is painted in blue and there is kindness in his hands. He takes mine in his and we go penguin sledding.


	6. Gran Gran

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Gran Gran **

A woman would come and bath me in a round iron tub. There were no lines to crease her face and her hair was thick and black, but her golden eyes were gentle.

I began to call her Gran Gran.

The water was warm and smelled sweet. She sang and crooned softly a lullaby I had never heard. I closed my eyes and hummed along. She dressed me in a soft blue tunic and pulled a white parka over my head. It had a soft hood lined in fur that tickled my chin.

Her fingers and a pretty shell comb worked through my wet hair and the tangles and knots.

It felt nice to have Gran Gran braid my hair again.

-

_It should be somewhat apparent by now, hopefully, that Katara is not mentally stable._


	7. Fog

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Fog**

There became a sort of routine that developed as the days came and went.

I would awaken and he would feed me. Then he would dress and leave while I stayed. Some days Gran Gran would come and bath me. The rest of the time I lounge in the pelts.

Somewhere between sleeping and waking I hover in a vague drowsy state for the rest of the day. It is murky and dark.

I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat.

Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep.

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_Please review if you read and alert if you liked._


	8. Sokka

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Socka**

He leaves during the day and returns at night. I slept most of the time so it didn't matter to me that I was alone for most of it. The fire in the center of the igloo kept me warm along with the pelts.

Sometimes when he came back he was angry and the fire flared and blazed to match his flashing eyes. Mostly, though, he was tired and saddened. Looking at me seemed to make him more weary and sad. He always looked away first as if something in me pained him to look at.

The fire always burned strong and bright.

I remembered before that Sokka had often let the fire burn out. Then he would curse and moan and whine as he struggled to relit the dry logs with our flint stones. There were no flint stones in our igloo and the fire never went out.

I stopped calling him Sokka in my mind.

-

_Any guesses as to who "he" is?_


	9. Watching

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Watching**

He watches.

He thinks I do not notice but I do. I watch him watch me. His eyes are both concerned and careful, wary of me. I know it is because of the way I am.

_Broken._

Sometimes words and sounds stream pass the columns of my teeth. Incoherent mad mumblings, cries, and screams. Other times I open wide my mouth and try to speak, try to make any sort of sound. Nothing emerges.

He watches and I watch back.

**-**

_if you read please review if you liked please alert._


	10. Dreams

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

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**Dreams**

I dream dreams.

When I wake and my mind buzzes, awash with memories from another time and place. Memories of flame and fire, of destruction and death.

There are faces.

A girl solid and strong with cloudy eyes. _Toph_. A son of the sea holds a sword made of the stars. _Sokka_. Beside him a warrior woman brandishes steel fans. _Suki_. And there is the child I've dreamed of before. A child painted in blue arrows with ancient eyes full of knowledge. _Aang_.

The faces along with their names fade rapidly as I awaken and I am relieved, for the memory itself had sent a sharp stab of physical pain that remains, aching in my breast.

**-**

_I was going to be evil and make you guys guess who katara was dreaming about but I decided to be less cryptic for a change and tell you._

___Please review if you read, and alert if you liked._


	11. Hands

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Hands**

It is night and I cannot sleep. An odd occurrence, considering. There is a pulling from within, demanding of me something I do not know how to give. The full moon reflects off the icy floor where shadows from the fire dance.

He sleeps restlessly, an arms length from me, having drifted from his customary corner sometime during the night. His brow is furrowed and I watch his eyes move erratically under his lids. I am struck with the strange urge to brush the hair from his forehead. His outstretched hand clenches the air, grasping, searching for something, as the rest of his body strains in the thrall of his dreams. I reach out and our palms align, like corresponding shapes.

I wonder if his dreams mirror mine. I wonder if he sees the same faces in his dreams that I see in mine.

I hold his hand through the night and wonder.

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_I don't know if I like this one very much. I update frequently so please alert if you liked and want to continue reading... also please review. _


	12. Aang

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Aang**

_We are flying, the boy and I. Soaring. _

_There is only sky, above, below, all around us. I should be terrified, instead all I feel is a great swell of exhilaration. I cling tighter to him and match his smile with my own. The orange wings of the glider above us billow with wind. It smells like freedom and pure, unhindered joy._

_In the next instant the glider is gone, like smoke blown from our fingers. Our hands are left to clutch uselessly at air and then at each other. And we are falling down, down, down. The wind steals my voice as I open my mouth in a soundless scream. _

_The earth rises to meet us all too soon. I brace for an impact than never happens. We fall down, into the earth itself, sinking into its dark depths. Somehow this is even more terrifying than our fall from the heavens. _

_We land on a floor that is hard and scorching, heated with molten magma from the core of the earths centre. His hand is jostled from mine and I grope for it in the black void that surrounds. _

_Then dark is flooded with light and I see him, standing there in front of me, the source of the light, eyes and arrows glowing. He looks at me with those eyes, so old in a face so young, and says in a thousand different voices speaking all at once, "I'm sorry Katara...I can't do it... I can't end a life like that... I'm sorry... I can't kill him". _

_The nature of my element flows through me demanding that I go to him, comfort him and sooth him. I want to promise him that it will all be alright, that we can fix this. _

_Before my mouth can catch up to my brain or my hands draw him to me the light fades and darkness lies thick all around. The boy is gone and all I can think is that I am alone. Alone in the dark heat. Suffocating. Panic floods me, constricting my lungs. My eyes strain but there is nothing but black. I stumble along franticly in this place of hellish volcanic heat, panic rising with each passing moment, calling his name over and over and over._

-

I am jolted back by persistent hands. He has hold of me and is shaking me back and forth.

I had been screaming a name over and over again.

I feel moisture down my face, wetting my cheeks. I didn't know why my eyes were leaking. I couldn't remember. I try to push the moisture back into my eyes but they keep dripping. He pushes my hands away and replaces them with his own, brushing my wet cheeks with his thumbs.

His eyes were wet too. A steady stream and a trickle. I reach up and touch the skin below his eyes. Underneath my right hand I feel jagged, puckered flesh, instead of smooth skin. For a moment my curious fingers explore the dips and crags before he jerks away from me, as though my touch stings him.

He says the name I had been screaming when I woke.

"_Aang"._

His voice sounds so torn and hurting I react instinctively, wrapping my arms around him. At first he tenses, uncertain of the embrace, then clutches me to him fiercely. His hot breath warms my neck. One of my hands finds its way to tangle in his hair, the other circles his back. His tears seep through my tunic.

We cling to each other through the night and each night after. It feels right. I no longer feel so alone.

-

_So first part in italics is katara's dream. There's another clue to the identity of 'him' also if you hadn't figured it out yet. I really liked how this one came out even though it ended up being a bit long compared to the others. Let me know what you take is on the dream... please remember my story is AU Post Sozins Comet. It follows the story up to the end (Aang did not defeat the fire lord)._

_I was thinking also of doing a chapter in Zuko POV to show more of whats really going on. Would you guys be into that?_

_Please review if you read and alert if you liked. _


	13. Attraction

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Attraction**

I sit in the bath alone.

Gran Gran has gone off muttering to herself about towels.

I sit, lulled by warm scented water. It calls to me in a language I do not know and yet still understand. I cannot resist such a call.

Underneath it is warm, silent, and peaceful. It feels natural and soothes something in my soul. The only sound is my heart pounding in my ears like the beat of a drum. I listen. I count the seconds. _One twenty one, one twenty two, one twenty three._ Rough hands grab me and I am being hauled up and over and out.

His eyes are frantic, his hands fluttering from my throat to my mouth and then back down again to the junction where my shoulder meets neck. Pressing there he searches. Finding the rhythm of my heart he relaxes. The panic melting off his face.

His eyes drift down my body and something between us changes in that moment. I know I should feel the urge to cover my nakedness but I am too captivated by his eyes. They darken as they linger along my flesh. Scrambling to his feet he backs away, cheeks flushed, eyes locked below my neck. Water darkens the front of his clothes and drips to a puddle beneath his feet.

His gaze scorches me. I shiver.

He mistakes it for cold. He wraps me in blankets, and tucks me between the pelts. His fingers brush my arm, my shoulder, my collar bone.

Slowly the thing between us fades.

-

_This chapter is still Katara POV._

_I got mixed responses on the possible Zuko POV chapter so I'm going to write a chapter in Zuko POV and if I like it I'll post it next and you guys get to read and decide if its not a complete failure :D_

_Also at some point I will edit this story so that it is more cohesive but for now I am to lazy._

_As always please review if you read and alert if you liked, I enjoy any and all feedback. _


	14. Trapped

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko POV_

**-**

**Trapped **

It seems strange, even now, after all that has happened, that fate, with its twisted humor, has brought us to this place where it all began.

I remember it clearly as though it was yesterday. I can still taste fire in the air and smell the burnt flesh smoldering from the bolt to my chest. Some ways behind us, chained and flailing, Azula's screams reverberate and echo through the caverns of my ears.

She stands close beside me, solid and strong, supporting me with one arm curled around my waist. Tears are drying on her cheeks, fingers dripping. Tears she cried for me, water she healed me with. I lean heavily upon her. The wound to my chest has weakened me. The newly grown nerves scream in protest with each breath and my lungs still feel scorched but I can breathe none the less. She has given life to me. Standing there, with her at my side, I feel so many emotions surge and tangle within. I feel whole.

It was almost two years ago that I stood with her and awaited the avatars return.

I remember the foreign feeling of hope that rose and swelled within me. Hope that my father would be defeated, that the war my grandfather declared on the world would end and that an era of peace would begin.

Aang did return to us.

His limp charred body hung, draped in my fathers hands. Katara didn't make a sound but her hands around me went slack and I felt her sag against me, until I was the one supporting her now. I was afraid to look at her face.

Instead I stared at my father. I could see the bloodlust painted on his features. I could read the eagerness in his eyes. I could see he wanted to finish what Azula had started. I remembered thinking it was unfair that she would have to watch me die twice that day.

We were surrounded and it was hopeless. The power of the comet still sang through my veins but the Azula's blue fire had sapped me of my strength. Katara's water was all gone, evaporated by Azula's flames, the last used to fill the jagged hole in my torso.

Everything happened so quickly. They took her from me and I was powerless to stop them.

My fathers eyes mock me... _weak, weak, weak_, they say.

I teetered precariously on my feet, the ache of freshly constructed nerves and skin screaming in my veins. The smell of burnt singed flesh lingers in the air.

In the end it was Azula's demented wailings that stayed his eager hand. I was not to die that day. He was hesitant. I was after all his only sane heir, now that Azula had been swallowed by the darkness in her mind.

I was forced to kneel at his feet, ruler of the fire nation, conquerer of the world, self declared Phoenix Lord... my father. And then came the weeks of interrogation and the endless questions. Weeks turned into months. In the end I pledged my allegiance to him. There was no other choice, her life depended on my compliance. She was all I had left. I had long ago stopped caring about my own insignificant existence. Her well-being was all that mattered now.

And so I promise anything and everything, I promise myself.

After I am allowed to collect her and bring her with me to our new home. The cell they locked her in is dark, dirty, and bare and I am at once angry and alarmed. I expect her azure eyes to be filled with grieving sorrow or, worse yet, I fear they will glow with suspicious anger. What greets my eyes is far worse. All life has bled from her eyes, something else fills them now. She stares vacantly through me, through the prison walls that surround, through to somewhere only she can see. She holds her knees to her chest and rocks slowly, back and forth. I am afraid to touch her, afraid she will shatter in my palms.

She laughs, wild eyed, and calls me Sokka and if I thought I had know fear before it is nothing in comparison with what I feel now.

-

The ship we board reminds me of tea and music night and an uncle once mine. Only everything is different and at once the same. Our coarse is set and my fate sealed. She barely notices when we arrive at our destination, our new home and her old one. The South Pole.

The remains of the Northern water tribe have been rounded up and sent here and I am to be Governor of it all. And I must watch as her people, once fierce and proud, are made subservient, the Phoenix Emperors slaves. In that I envy her, that she has locked herself away and cannot see such things.

But the real reason I am here is not to oversee the water tribe peoples, I am just a figurehead, a puppet controlled by my fathers hand. The real reason I am here is because he is afraid the avatar will return. He still fears the boy he slaughtered, crazed with an obsession born from his youth he waits in fear for the rebirth of the avatar. The fire mages have assured him that the cycle has been broken and the avatar cannot rise again. But still he waits and watches and each child borne to the water tribe, the next element in the avatar cycle, is killed to ensure the avatar will never return. There is no hope.

I would have left long ago, run far away, lost myself among the peasants I once scorned a lifetime ago. Perhaps I would have made a last stand, taken as many with me before I died. I would have done so if I was without a reason to keep living. She is my reason. She ties me here as surely as my lost honor once tied me to the avatar.

Something happened to her in the moment she saw Aangs corpse and the months she spent in the dark prison. Something that broke her, shattered, tore her into small pieces that she tucked away deep inside. She is helpless as a young babe, childlike in her incoherence and I do my best to protect her. Sometimes though I think she remembers, about Aang and the rest. She dreams and when she wakes, tears trekking down smooth cheeks, I hold her and she holds me. I wait for her to return to this reality, it is all I hope for now.

When I found her in the tub, underneath, I was afraid. Afraid that she would leave me alone. When I realize she is alright it is not the only realization that strikes me. We have been here two years and she has grown and matured. She is no longer a girl but a woman, full and soft. I could no more stop my eyes from drinking her in than I can stop the want that rises within. I have to remind myself that she is not herself and even if she was she would never want me, not like I want her.

I must protect her. Above all else she needs me. It feels good to be needed, to have a purpose in this bleak future. I would sooner give my life than have harm come to her and my father knows this. He uses such knowledge to control me.

And so I remain, trapped as surely as if my father had chained me to a prison wall. Only this prison is made of ice and cold and cracked blue eyes and is far worse.

-

_Hopefully you all enjoyed this Zuko POV chapter (it was really long) and it helped fill in some holes and answer some of your questions._

_As always please review if you read and alert if you liked. Common make my day._


	15. J'ing

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Its been a while since I've updated this story. I was organizing the documents on my laptop and realized I had this chapter written but had never posted it so here you are..._

_'Gran Gran' POV_

_-_

**J'ing**

I was born in this life to be one that serves not one who is served.

My father was a rice farmer on the edges of a small village so inconsequential I shall not even name it. My mother was blessed early in her marriage, her firstborn was a son. She had three daughters shortly after. Much later I was born, when their eldest and only son was serving our Fire Lord in the war and all of my sisters had been married. The day I travelled from my mothers womb into this world she received word that her only son had been killed as the troops retreated from Bai Sing Sei. As she drew her last breath she pleaded with the sun gods for a boy child to avenge his brothers death.

I was not to be the son she prayed for.

I was given the name J'ing, the pitfall. My father, his wife and only son dead, turned to drink and the farm fell into disrepair. He couldn't stand the sight of me, I who reminded him of a wife and son dead. By the time I was four I was sold as a servant. From there I was passed from noble family to noble family, until I ended up at the Royal Palace where I became one of the Fire princesses personal servants.

In a time of war and unrest, shortages and famine, I was happy to have a roof over my head and rice to warm my belly. It was far more than many of my countrymen had. I expected to lead out my life quietly in the country of my birth. Than everything changed on the day that would come to be know as Sozin's Comet. It was also the day of Princess Azula's coronation and her usual cold facade was twisted in a deranged sneer. The circular tray was heavy and cold in my hands as I knelt and offered it to her. Her eyes were wild and her hand shook as she plucked a cherry from the top. It still had the pit inside. Such a small thing really...but it sent her composure crashing. Had I dared to look her in the eyes I would have seen my own death. Instead I was dealt banishment.

But before this could be brought about there was a change, a political shift within the Royal household. I was still the be banished but I would stay a servant. Azula's brother Prince Zuko, would be my new Master, and his companion the Lady Katara, my new Mistress. It is said that she is Prince Zuko's conquest of war, his prize... his concubine. I can see why Prince Zuko is so taken with her. She is beautiful with eyes of sea and skin of dark milky tea.

At first I was terrified of this foreign land of ice and cold. I was afraid of her, this master water bender, teacher of the avatar. It was rumored her power was so great she could freeze the blood in one's veins and command very sea itself to do her bidding. And I had heard things, terrible gruesome tales from the other servants that with her barbaric water witchery she could steal your soul under the full moon... that she has stolen the soul of Prince Zuko and uses him as a puppeteer manipulates a puppet.

But she different from my old mistress. There is a different type of wild in her eyes. Blind grief. Misted despair. She exists as one would in a waking dream.

I bath her. Her hands, calloused and strong, speak of hard work; her eyes speak of sorrows. She calls me her Gran Gran, I am happy to bring her comfort.

I am content to be here.

-

_So there you have it... Gran Gran is revealed. I'm eager to hear what you all think. Is it who you expected?_

_Also, according to the online chinese dictionary, J'ing means pitfall in Standard Mandarin._


	16. Lies

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_-_

_Back to Katara POV._

**Lies**

I jerk up, out of the pile of furs. My mouth opens and closes, like the mouth of a squirrel bass. I can't breathe. Next to me he jerks awake also, his arms encircle and I feel his hands pat my head and back, like a mother would. I shudder in his arms. My skin is trying to crawl away.

I still see his face. The face of the man I killed. He comes to me. His face haunts my dreams. And I remember. Even after I wake he lingers with me. Literally. He stands in the room dripping onto the pearly floor. Just dripping and watching. His beady black eyes won't let me go.

I should have told Aang the truth. Perhaps it would have helped him come to terms with what he had to do. Everyone had to sacrifice something of themselves. Everyone but Aang and how it had cost us, cost us everything. Even I had sacrificed a part of myself. I gave up my childhood, my innocence.

I used to believe as he did that every person, no matter how evil still had good inside of them and could be saved. But there are some who shouldn't be allowed on this earth. There are some that cant be saved, that don't want to be saved. Those some should be killed.

What we told Aang was a lie. I didn't spare the monster who killed my mother.

I killed him.

And it wasn't a swift death. It was the type of execution reserved for the lowest of the low. The type of death reserved for child molesters, rapists, and murderers. The death of a thousand cuts.

Some part of me had been afraid that despite all my hate I wouldn't be able to hurt him. So it is was a relief of sorts after the first shard of ice sliced a line of crimson down his arm. The first sight of his blood did nothing to whet the appetite of my vengeance, it only made me hungrier. Hungry for more. And as my ice eats away at him his screams sound like music to my ears.

I am like a painter, the ice my brush, his body my canvas. It reminds me of when my mother taught me how to hem. "Be precise," she had said "A steady hand makes for an even stitch." My hands are steady. Only instead of putting together my hands rip apart.

And now he watches me, outside of memory and dream. He stands there _drip drip drip_ and the puddle beneath his feet grows. The shudder turns to a shake and now I am laughing. Uncontrollably. The arms tighten and hold me tighter and a worried face peers down at me. Always so worried now. But I can only laugh.

I laugh because my eyes are tired of crying. I laugh because there are no more tears left to cry. I can only keep laughing. Laughing at the irony of it all. I laugh because he holds out his hands to me, his whole body seeping crimson tears, even his eyes.

His hands reach for me and dripping he says "Join me sister".

-

_The death of a thousand cuts was a form of torture and execution originating from Imperial China. _

_Reviews would be lovely._


	17. Cuts

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_-_

_Disclaimer: I in no way advocate self injury. Please remember there is always a better solution. Talking to someone about what you are feeling can be the first step to recovery. _

**Cuts**_  
_

Today my fingers are curious, wandering over every surface. In the bottom of a trunk, my trunk, they touch thick parkas and sealskin boots. They find walrus-fox comb the color of dirty snow. They find the matching hand mirror and hold it up to my face.

The face that stares back at me I cannot stand to see. It is the face of my mother. But my mother is dead. This face mocks me. I think about breaking the face. Smashing the face to pieces on the icy floor. But my eyes spy something better. The something has a bronze handle and a metal gleam. It is in his trunk, among his things but I take it anyways. A knife with curious symbols carved into the blade. I pick up the knife.

I stab. I cut. I slice.

The hair falls away slowly like leaves drifting towards the ground. I cut until it ends in a line across the tops of my breasts. My hair is now a solid entity, unbroken by hair loopies or braids. It is a curtain falling over my face. But it does not feel right. I need to wear lush maroon lips with this hair. I need tight slinky clothes and a voice to match. I need hard eyes and a harder arm. I should have a beast to ride, and scent, and hunt.

I pick the knife back up again. I saw and hack. I divide.

Now my hair ends at my chin. I pause and consider. But this length is not right. I need paint to redden my lips and pale my face. I need fans and I need the deadly dance of a warrior woman. This style is all wrong. Shaking my head I cut on.

I chop. I jab. I thrust.

Now jagged chunks of hair hang in my eyes, longer than the pieces in the back. But even this does not fit. My eyes should be clouded not clear. My hands should be calloused and rough. My skin should be dusted with smudges of dirt. I need fingernails darkened with dirt. I need bare feet. I need to keep cutting.

I strike. I slice. I separate

I stop when it is all gone. Not completely gone though. If my head was to be bare I would need clothing the orange of a sunset and lines of blue tracing my skin. I would need eyes the color of smoke and a smile as wide as a sky bison. I have none of those things. I do not even have a smile to give. I have only brown skin and eyes blue. I have only a nose too small and ears too big. And now I have short fuzz that covers my head like a lemur's fur. Now it is right.

The blade slips and bites at my fingers. The sensation is... interesting. My fingertips well then ooze. They drip. I draw a half moon on my forehead… for bravery. Now the face looking back at me is a paradox of present and past. The sight makes me angry and I scrub at the bloody moon with my fingers. It only smears and adds more and more until it slides down my nose and drips onto my lips. It tastes. It tastes like the metal hull of a boat kissed by foamy sea. I test the weight of the blade in my hands and consider my wrists.

Then, suddenly, he is there; eyes more wild then my own. He wrestles the knife away and mixes his fingers with my own. They dance on my face. They twirl and spin all over. Now there are three colors. Brown _mine_ and white _his_;and together we dance in the red.

I paint a curved arch on his forehead. Crimson on white. The words echo in my head from somewhere in my past and I say them aloud. "The mark of the trusted." At the words his face shutters and he turns from me. Hides his face. He can't stand to look at me. Or himself. I knew the feeling. The hair puddled at my knees speaks of regrets. My shorn head feels the cold now. I shiver.

My fingers stop dancing.

-

_So while Katara was cutting her hair I compared the different lengths of hair to the various women (and one man/boy) in her life. Did you catch them all? Did you recognize the knife? _

_There is also a moment taken from Season 1 episode: Bato of the Water Tribe._

_Thankyou for reading... and reviewing? Do it!_


	18. Shine

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_-_

**Shine**

For weeks now the moon has _been_.

Winter solstice has come and with it eternal night. The moon shines. The moon shines on me. It thrums inside me, the beat of the moon. It beats in waves on my skin. The power of it pulses through me and over me. The power is intoxicating. Overwhelming. And with each passing day I can feel the change within. Energies building and rising inside me, pressing me to... to something. To act.

And now, finally, it is too much.

My hands move, restless at my sides. They move up and out. They weave. They duck. They spin. And around me the ice rises to follow.

The feeling it brings me is indescribable. I feel release. I feel freedom. I feel indestructible.

The ice bends in my hands and I feel invincible. I am powerful. Nothing can touch me. I am so swept up in the fluidity of the ice around my palms that I hardly notice the door flap pushed to the side.

It is then, as I pivot and twist, that I see his face. A skulls face. A metal grill of a mouth. Flaming horns. There are no eyes just a horrible dark cavern of nothing. It is a monsters face.

The water drops from my hands and I fall to my knees. Curl in a ball, terrified. Now I am nothing. Now I am small. Now, I am afraid.

I am suddenly young again, a small girl watching snow mix with ash. Watching soot fall from the sky. Watching as the monster takes my mother from me.

I am nothing but a scared child.

Then _he _comes. He sends the monster away. He holds me. But I am still too terrified. I rock back and forth in his arms. I feel the rough press of his scar on my cheek. He chants to me over and over that 'it is okay, that it is all okay'.

But it is not okay. It will never be. I grip the short hairs of my head and rock, back and forth. Even with all the power of ice and liquid snow at my fingertips I am still nothing. I am broken.

I am helpless.

-

_Katara bends for the first time since Aangs death. A fire nation solider comes to investigate and she changes from a powerful bender to a frightened child of her past. She is beginning to remember, and she will continue to remember, and quite soon she will start to awaken from her insanity._

_If this comes off as more trippy than the usual its not my fault. I've been watching Ergo Proxy all week. _


	19. Shelled

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Katara POV_

**Shelled**

Lately a strange sense of clarity has come over me, thinning the fog. I can see more now. I am aware of more.

I see Gran Gran who comes in the morning and bathes me. I see the pelts I sit on now. I see the hours that pass in a mind numbing slow procession. I see my feet as they wander around the room, back behind the curtain to where I bathe. And finally, I see him.

He is all shadows and dips in the candlelight. The light plays over the hard planes of his back making him look soft and warm. Like melted wax. He turns toward me then and I can see him, all of him. He is bare, wet from the bath. I follow the drops on his skin that slide down. He is so fiercely beautiful my throat aches. Some part of me knows that I shouldn't look at him like this, naked and laid bare before my gaze. But I can't tear my eyes away.

He is blushing, up his throat and down his neck. We stand there, he and I. We see each other. Then he fumbles for his pants drawing them up and on and I am aware of the mewl of protest escapes my lips.

"Katara? What are you…?"

It is then that he suddenly sees. He sees something different in me. A change. He sees that I am here, now, in this moment; not trapped in the coils of my mind. It is the seeing that makes him pause. It is the seeing that holds him still as I reach out and touch him.

Underneath my fingers he shivers. He feels like heated silk. I brush over the taunt skin of his stomach. I linger over skin that ripples underneath my touch. I explore the ridges and indents of ribs. I trail to circle his nipple, lighter than mine. The color of peaches. My mouth waters. The drops on him quiver. I press.

He gasps, a strangled kind of sound, and arches into my touch. The drops on him sizzle. He feels hotter now, an inferno licking flames at my palms. I circle his nipple, once, twice, then drag my fingers across through the middle. It is then that they brush skin wrinkled and puckered. A scar. Dark and ugly in the center of his chest. Not as rough and raw as the one marring his eye. This is a newer, soften wound.

My fingers still over the mark and I feel the ghost of a memory nipping at my fingertips. A memory of blue fire and burnt flesh. A memory of grated water and chains. I remember.

My fingers drag small circles on the ruined skin.

"There was a girl. She did this to you."

He watches me, waiting.

"She struck you down while I watched. Then she came after me."

I reach out my other hand.

"I froze her. I chained her."

My fingers graze his cheek.

"She had the same eyes as you."

I press my palm to the middle of his chest with the mimicry of a healers touch.

"I fixed you and..."

He nods, yes. His eyes are eager... pulling and tugging me forward, pleading with me to remember.

"And after..." my mind whirls "we waited."

"We waited for...." And it is then that I suddenly and truly _see. _A broken burnt body. _His_ broken burnt body. Melted stripes of blue. Melted orange. My mind screams and my mouth opens wide. I wail.

He recoils at the sound, jerking away from me. I hardly notice. The memory is all encompassing. And in the remembering there is pain. So much pain. The hollow scream from my throat peals on and on. Faced with such pain I can only do one thing. I retreat back into the fog, into the not-knowing, and the not-seeing. There it is all emptiness. There it is all blurred. There I don't have to remember. And as my mind shuts down so then, at last, does my voice.

I am left with only the dark. I embrace it. I am alone even as he gathers me in his arms as somewhere, beyond the fog I rock in a soundless rhythm. But I am unaware of this. I am dazed, as though deaf and dumb.

I am utterly broken, shelled to pieces.

-

_See janedoe401 more katara remembering stuff! I try to make good on my promises _:D

_This chapter had a little payback from katara for when zuko caught her in the bath. This one is a bit more lemony than ever but I thought you guys deserved some zutara smexyness after all the angst. And I've been reading lots of leomony goodness in burning ice's 'Captive Audience". Awesome fic that one. Give it a look see. Right after you leave me a review..._


	20. Hahn

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Jin'g POV._

_-_

**Hahn**

I bathe the waterbender as always. But something is different. There is a clearness to her eyes, an awareness. She watches me as if it is the first time we have met and yet still she relaxes as my hands work through her hair.

I talk to her as always telling her of my day and a silly childhood memory from my past. Unlike before I can see her listening, really listening. It is both comforting and unsettling. Comforting because she listens. Unsettling because there is no response. My days are filled with my duties to this silent broken women. I am very much alone here. I crave human contact. I crave companionship.

I dry her and tuck her in the furs, leaving her to her dreams. Or nightmares. Usually I would return to my quarters but something compels me to walk the compound and beyond it. A line of men toil in a line, dragging logs from a firenation ship to feed the fires of the compound. My feet draw me closer, curiosity winning over common sense.

The men, watertribe, are shirtless, sweating beneath their heavy burdens. I shiver at this. Not out of attraction but out of disbelief. The cold here seems overwhelming, a seeping frigid chill that refuses to leave. Yet to these men it is their element and has little to no effect. A few paces away a man stumbles, falling to the packed snow. The watching soldier uncurls his whip lashing angry streaks across the mans back, growling. "Up dog!".

I watch horrified as the solider kicks him twice in the ribs laughing harshly as the water tribe man struggles to gain his feet. A sense of shame fills me. To know of the horrible things your nation, your people have done is much different than seeing it with your own eyes. As he passes I glimpse the scars of the whip across his back and the fresh welts above them. Bile rises in my throat and I can only think that it is not right. Something must be done.

He stumbles again and without thinking I have crossed the space between us, one arm across his lower back to support his weight the other to steady the log on his shoulder.

He pushes me away from him, violently. I fall back on the snow and gaze up into his furious eyes. The hate I see there makes me shudder.

"Don't touch me! Fire Nation Bitch!!!".

I rise shakily to my feet and follow at a distance behind the line, back to the compound. I don't blame him for his hatred. I only wish he could see that we are both prisoners. Him chained at night, I kept here with nowhere else to go.

When he stumbles again and the guard raises the length of whip I cannot stand it. I throw myself between. "NO!... No... no more"

For a moment I think the guard will still lash out and I brace myself. Instead he laughs. He says he cares not that I waste my time on such filth. And so I help. And this time he does not push me away. As I help him to his feet I smile at him, tentatively and shyly and whisper to him quietly under the earshot of the guard. "_My name is Jin'g_."

His eyes meet mine and there is no hate or fury but something that looks like hope.

"_Hahn. My name is Hahn_."

Ye_s_, I think, something must change. Something must be done.

-

_i wrote this in a smoke induced haze so i'm sure when the morning comes it might not be half as pretty or clever that i think it is. oh well._


	21. pray

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

Hahn POV

-

**Pray**

She is soft against me and warm, like the dying embers of a smoldering fire. The sweat on our combined limbs mingle, cooling our heated flesh. I wish to hold her like this, clasped so tightly to me that our hearts blend two rhythms into one. But from beyond the noises of the awakening camp penetrates, reaching us.

I step back and watch as she rearranges her clothing, pulling down her servants tunic and drawing up her leggings. I adjust my own leggings and resent the euphoria of release evaporates so easily in the chill of the morning. All we have are stolen moments, a glance across the ice, a brush of fingers against a hand, late night rendezvous; rushed and desperate. It is not enough and yet it must be.

The brief moments spent together consist not only of the sharing of physical pleasure but also that of conspiracy. She tells me of her discontent and disgust with her nation. And I learn there are others just like her and just as dissatisfied.

We talk of change, of rebellion. We think, we plot.

We speak of revolution.

Together we spread the word, her to her people and me to mine. Change is on the lips of the people.

As the days blurred to weeks and then months I found my connection to her had strengthened not only by our common revolt but also that of genuine_ like_. Attraction was always below the surface waiting. And when it first blossomed it bloomed red hot and all consuming. It is recent moments like these, when she blushes under my scrutiny and smooths her hair with fingers still trembling with remnants of shared passion, that I think the _like_ might grow to something else, something much stronger.

Much _more_.

A day of toil awaits me. A day of hard back breaking labor as monotonous as the last. A day of degradation and humiliation, of utter helplessness.

A day of bitter slavery.

It is made less bitter with a parting kiss from her that spreads warmth down to my toes and lingers sweetness in my mouth.

We are as unmatched as any. We come from different continents and separate faiths. She prays to the sun, I the moon. She has lived her life in servitude and I grew up surrounded in luxuries a royal requires. Yet the fates have destined to bring us together. A servant and fallen prince.

Different as night is from day.

And yet for the first time in as long as I can remember I have hope. And I pray. I pray to La and Tui. I pray to the moon, to Yue. I pray to the ocean and tide. I pray to the whisper of wind and the fleeting ghosts of time.

I pray and I wait.

-

_Another Hahn/Jin'g chapter. Hopefully you guys are liking this pairing. If not... _


	22. Soon

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Back to Katara POV..._

_-_

**Soon**

Time, which once moved quickly and effortlessly, now slows down excruciatingly. I feel every day, every hour, every minute. Even the seconds _tic _slowly away at me.

And with each passing moment I feel pieces of myself unraveling. And just like so many other things when I tug hard to get it back I only unravel faster.

The wind of remembering has blown in sweeping away little by little the fog. And swept along with it is the comfort. The comfort of ignorance and ignoring. Of pushing down and under and away.

Instead the memories haunt me; refusing to offer me any quarter, any retreat.

I am bombarded by broken images, flashes of color, sounds- the voices of people I once knew in another life. And unlike before I can not hide in the haze of my mind. Each memory sends me one step closer towards the edge, towards a precipice, towards the brink. And I know when I hurtle over there will be no return.

His watches me with eyes as careful as always. But now I think I see fear mixed in with the watching. I know what it is he fears. I fear it as well. Yet it looms in the horizon. A soon approaching inevitability.

Inescapable. Unavoidable.

My awakening.

_Soon._

_._

_-_

_20 or more chapters to go. Next: Why Zuko fears Katara's 'awakening'._

_Review biatches. _

_and alert. _

_and favorite perhaps?_


	23. Torn

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko POV_

_-_

**Torn**

She is coming too, slowly but ever so surely. Every day, every hour, every moment brings it closer. Soon her memories will return in full.

Such a thing terrifies me and I fear it. I fear it almost as equally as I crave it.

Part of me wishes we could go on just as we are. Her lost in her mind, and me as I am, here with her. Part of me thinks it will be better. For what can her lucidity mean but more sorrow and increased helplessness?

Once she realizes where she is and what has happened, there will be nothing next. There _can_ be nothing next. Aang is gone. They are all gone.

There is no plan of action, no road to be traveled, no end in site. There is only this painful existence, numbing in its inadequacy. And we simple exist. Here, in half lives.

How much more acutely will she feel it? She who has roused imprisoned Earthbenders and awakened the Avatar himself. She who has healed thousands with her words and her water. She who has devoted her whole life, her whole existence to the cause. Now the cause is no more. There is only the defeat that comes with loss, defeat and the helplessness that accompanies the powerless. For that is what we are. Powerless.

I do not wish her to feel such overwhelming hopelessness. Such lack. And yet I want someone to share the burden of incapacity.

I am as two people, each wishing for opposite things, melded into one confused frame. I want equally her return just as I want no return. It leaves me conflicted.

Torn between what is and what will be.

-

_On a fucking role! not stopping until the dice slows._


	24. All

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Katara POV_

_-_

**All**

**-**

It was an accident.

Completely and utterly unintended. Unforeseen. Unpredictable. Entirely by chance. A series of events at the right time and place that made it so.

If he was not in so much of a hurry this morning he might not have jostled it loose from his things. Then I might not have seen it as I walk jerkily around the perimeter of the room, hand dragging against the icy wall, trapped in the vapors of my mind. I might have gone on like that for days, weeks, months, indefinitely.

But I did see it.

Almost stumbling over his burnished chest, catching myself on its sharp corner, and looking down I see _it_. A simple disk of blue peeking out from robes of red.

Somewhere below, deep down inside, a part of me screams in recognition. I reach and grasping soft worn velvet I pull. It dangles before my face. For a moment I hesitate, even bogged down inside myself I know that this is the moment, the point in which everything will change. I stand on the verge, on the very edge. A point that is either the beginning or the end. I take the plunge.

My hands wrap around, touching every surface.

The memories return, reaching through my fingertips. It is not a sudden rush but a slow growing heat that spreads throughout. I know if I let it fall through my fingers the memories will fall with it, clattering onto the ice. But I hold fast. The hard edge digging into my palm. I let the memories wash over me like an electric current that sends my back half arching forward and up.

Later I would think to myself that it should have been something else, not this, that shook me from the haze. Something far more significant that jolted me back to reality. It should have been something great, something powerful, some dramatic event to pull me from the waters of my mind. And yet it was this simple trinket. A discarded symbol of one man's refused love, never mine to begin with.

Later I would ask myself why I had not awoken when I dreamt so vividly of Aang, or when I felt Zuko's scar under my fingers, or when the firenation soldier revived painful memories of a mother gone.

I would later wonder that it was this, so simple of a thing, to dissipate the fog. But for now I can only marvel at it all. I can remember, I know it all once more. What was once old is now anew, fresh.

I remember the faces of my family and hear the soothing lullabies of a mother long gone. I taste the salty tang of stewed sea prunes and laugh again at Sokka's pranks. I hear the crackle of ice beneath my feet and see the boy and his beast that rise from its depths. I feel the first taste of fear and sample it many times after as those who serve fire attack, and slash, and burn. The images, little clips of moments and experiences, hit me full on speeding their way through my head.

I gasp from the force of such memories. But I cannot stop now...

...I squeeze harder.

The smooth surface bites harder at my hand and I can see the walls of Ba Sing Sei and humble huts sunk in swampy marsh. There are dusty earth kingdom roads and icy northern crystal palaces. I feel the humid heat of fire land nights and see a gauzy veil settle over my red pigment streaked face under the wide brim of a peaked straw hat. There is more...

...I grip closer.

The current grows stronger and more finely tuned, narrowing down, contracting to a pinpoint. I can feel the piercing burn of sharp flames and feel wonder as my hands glow with healing coolth. I battle against chauvinistic prejudice, always fighting just to be, be as me. As I am. Then I fight against it as I am forced to invade and plunder the life giving essence as blue as water while inside. Red without. And still...

...I hold tighter.

The disk feels like a fiery kiss. I can remember pushing down doubts and putting on a brave front. I remember battle plans and somber goodbyes. Then I feel the rush of adrenaline as we fight, fight, fight. But it is all for naught. I can see now horrible twisted limbs, broken bodies, burnt flesh. I watch as all I love disappears. I feel my heart shatter within all over again. Tears flood my eyes and burn my lids. I want to push it back down again but there can be no retreat. This is reality. This is remembering.

My head is spinning. I am delirious with remembrance.

I stay that way, holding fast to my necklace of blue, and when he returns I am ready.

"Zuko... we need to talk"

He sees that I have returned, sane inside myself.

I have been stirred into _alertness,_ within has been _roused _and made _aware_, brought to a _consciousness_ and _knowing_; now _witting_, finally _cognizant__,_ I have been _awakened_ at last.

And I am **all** of these.

-

_After many failed attempts I wrote this in my head while in the shower. Why is it that that words come to me at the most inconvenient places? I guess I shouldn't complain as long as they come._


	25. Shadows

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

Katara POV

-

**Shadows**

-

_Zuko... we need to talk._

His eyes meet mine across the ice and something heavy gathers in my throat. I know what he will say even before he opens his lips.

He sits beside me and reaches for my hand. But my hands are tangled in my necklace of blue, they hold no room for another. He pulls his hand back.

He tells me then how the world is now. How strange and different and _defeated_ it is.

He tells me of fallen earth kingdom walls and slave mines filled with the people who built such walls.

He tells me of melted ice palaces to the north and its people rounded up like chattel to serve a bloated flame.

I know all this, I expected no less. But when he tells me that my kind, all the waterbenders were the first to be rounded up and slaughtered. Executed. I feel the telltale signs of tears rising. There is an itchiness behind my eyes and I wants to rub the angry heat away.

Then when he tells me how all the children, all the infants, all the innocents were taken, massacred, I feel something break again inside. I had thought I had no more tears left to cry, yet they come. Treacherous, traitorous tears.

But somethings is missing, without sense. Why was I not killed along with my brothers and sisters? Why was my life spared?

I ask. His eyes flicker off me and away quickly. Too quickly.

I ask again.

_They needed you alive to keep me in line. My father seeks to control me, tug and pull at my strings and send me dancing any way he pleases. He fears the next avatar to be born into water. So he sends me here, his lackey his pawn, to do his dirty work. To make sure there are no children born to water. To make sure there is no avatar. He knows that I will do nothing to threaten his rule with your life hanging in the balance._

I don't understand.

_...why me?_

He reaches again for my hands. I let him take them.

_You have to know your all I have left. _

I could remember the Zuko from before. The Zuko full of anger and never ending drive. Zuko never quits... right? Wasn't that what we had always said. Only this man in front of me, this shadow of a boy I once knew, is far too tired to be Zuko. There are lines on his brow and marking his mouth and his eyes are old and worn. He might look like Zuko but he is not. And I am not Katara. Not really.

We are shadows of our former selfs in this shadow filled world. This world that is not right.

I feel the hopelessness that marks his face swamp my own.

-

_The italics are spoken conversation._

_Usually I let the words fester in my brain before I put pen to paper (er hand to keyboard) but with this chapter I forced it out of me like a stubborn... well you get the picture. _


	26. Lady

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Katara POV_

_-_

**Lady**

-

She brushes my damp hair after my bath, as always. It is more to keep the daily ritual than to rid hair of tangles. My shorn hair is far to short to warrant tangles.

I should be wary of this girl, fire nation screams itself in her clothes and slanting yellow eyes. But my instincts scream back at me _Gran Gran _and I find I trust the earnestness I find in her face.

Our innocent chatterings turns to the state of the world and suddenly we are entrenched in deep discourse. I had heard from Zuko and now I hear much the same from her.

I ask about my people, I have yet to see any water tribe outside the small window of this igloo, not quite ready to venture out. She tells me the slaves are segregated from the main buildings on the outskirts of the encampment. They are kept in two huts, men separated from women. I see the obvious logic behind this. No watertribe children, no avatar.

"_You are lucky"_ she tells me,_"to have the Prince to protect you. He watched over you so carefully when you were not well. He must care deeply for you..._

She hesitates.

_...and you care for him?_

My first instinct is an adamant _No!_ but then I think of when my mothers murderer lay bled dry at my feet and vomit burned its way up my throat and I tried not to cry. I remember how he held my trembling blood soaked hands up to the rain and washed them clean. I remember the bolt of blue light, meant for me, scorching a gaping hole in his own chest. Then I think about finding him in the bath, the way the drops of water caressed his skin, the heat of that skin underneath my fingers, his darkening eyes. I find I cannot trust myself to answer.

I lick my lips, unsure. I_ do not know how I feel. I am afraid to know. _I say nothing.

Her eyes smile with girlish excitement as if we are two confidents talking about our lovers. I can almost believe it myself. There is a kind of comfort in the sham of pretend.

I play along and ask her in return.

"_Is there a special someone for you Jing. A valet perhaps or a solider?" _

She smiles a secret smile.

"_No... no solider... no one like that."_

I know what such a smile means and I wonder.

But then the smile fades and her brow furrows and she worries her lip between her teeth.

I have been swept up in my own world that it seems odd that there are people outside it that have worries as I. I feel the rush of shame at my own selfishness, I never even noticed before, never thought to ask. _What is wrong._

A useless question when so much of the world is just that. When I ask she just smiles again, this time a sad smile and a half shake of her head. She hugs herself around the middle, protectively. My eyes follow. I understand, if only a little. Not all troubles can be shared. It is left at that.

The prongs of the comb massage my scalp, the easy comfort of the familiar motion causes my body to relax further into the brush strokes. Ever since I escape from the coils of my mind everything appears brighter, fuller some how, and I gaze at everything as if it is the first time I have done so but avoid looking to long at my reflection off the ice. I am afraid to see myself and the ravaged remains of my hair.

Finishing, she lays the comb down and rises to leave. I catch her arm in my hand. The igloo feels far too cold and lonely for me to stand alone. I am conscious now of time and how slowly it moves, I cannot curl in on myself and sleep the day away. Not anymore.

She sits again beside me and we talk of nonsense, of nothings. Of home and and the faces that made it that. Of family. We talk and remember together and for a moment escape this reality for one past. I tell her about the time Sokka tried to get one fishhook out with another and ended up with two in his thumb. She laughs at this and I join. We laugh together. I can't remember the last time I laughed.

We laugh so hard that my eyes tear. Than those tears are real and pouring down my face and the laugh stills in my throat and sobs its way our. Sadness floods me._ Brother._

She holds my hands, her face anxious.

"_Do not cry my lady."_

I wipe the tears from my eyes and attempt a smile. It feels wobbly and strained on my face. Foreign.

"_Please, call me Katara" _I say.

I am lady of nothing.

-

_ironically I imagined snow white and the old crone talking over apples about prince charmings as I wrote this. _

_mostly a pointless semi-fluff chapter between katara and jing besides some clues I threw in for chapters to come._

_-_

_Lay_, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed- bob dylan


	27. Use

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko POV..._

-

**Use**

-

I am no longer summoned before the fire nobles as before.

Such obvious dismissal does not bother me. They have little enough need of me. My duties before were to sit in meetings I did not call, sign orders I did not make. I am a figurehead only, a symbol of my fathers far reaching control.

The truth of it is I am both relieved and terrified. Relieved to be absent from the cold eyes, the poisoned words, the manipulations of those truly in power. Terrified because I fear my absence could mean the end of my usefulness to them. Without usefulness I am dead. Dead and I am of no use to her.

Lately something has changed between us. Something so slight, so subtle that I think I must have imagined it. Yet it is present in the way she brushes her hand across mine. I can feel it in the very air that separates us. I can see it in her eyes.

She looks at me with _something_ that isn't _nothing_.

Before I had worked so hard to look at her as the child she was in her mind. It was hard. She would look up at me with her wide distant eyes and my own would stray to the curve of her lips and the swell of her breasts. Too often I found myself wanting to touch, to taste. When she curled up against me at night I had to fight not to draw her closer and part her legs with my own. It was during these long nights that I realized the attraction I felt for her had grown to much _more_.

I am no stranger to the feeling.

I had felt a shadow of this before, with Mai. She was the only person who would have me. When I had been burned and banished I had felt so alone, worthless and _ugly_. I had needed to be wanted and she had given me that. She had wanted me when no one else had. So I had loved her part out of gratefulness and part out of obligation, because she was exactly the type of person I _should_ end up with.

But what I feel now with the waterbender is something less fleeting, more solid. It snuck up on me so slowly, so steadily, that when I realized what it was it was far too late.

I'm already in too deep. Drowning.

I had always admired her tenacity, her fierce loyalty to those she calls friends. After I had joined the Avatar I saw firsthand her compassion, her kindness, and her selflessness. She forgave me when I didn't deserve it. I love those things about her. But do I love her? What is love? Can it be defined? Does it have a shape or face? Or is it just a word, four letters. A notion, hollow and unmeasurable. My mother told me she loved me, then she turned her back and left me alone to face Ozai.

I don't know if I love her. But I know I would never leave her. That has to be worth something even if it has no name.

When summons do come I fear the worse. They gather around me, the smell of their incense dipped robes stinging my nostrils. What they tell me, command me, what I must _do, _sends a chill through my very bones. It is unthinkable. Unforgivable.

But no matter how much my mind races to find any other solution, I am left with only the one. It is truly unescapable.

I can see no way out.

-

_next up. what zuko must do... or does he? wow just confused myself with that one._

_sorry for the double post. I changed some stuff and it wasn't showing up. I like how the mai part came out. it perfectly describes how i see their cannon relationship on the show._


	28. prophesy

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko POV..._

_-_

_**Prophesy**_

_-_

I am awake and waiting when they enter.

This day it is just the two Fire Sages. One to carry the potion, the other to hold me still if I refuse to drink. I know better than to fight inevitability and open my lips when they hold the cup up to my mouth.

The liquid is clear like water but burns like fire down my throat. The after taste is like acid on my tongue. Moments later my inner fire feels stifled. Smothered. The same as the day before.

-

_I struggle against constricting arms that hold me down. The lip of the cup smashes against my lips which I refuse to open. But then one of them pinches my nose closed and when I open my mouth to breath the substance rushes over my tongue, choking me. The contents are foreign and send a rush of intense heat and then... then nothing. A cold icy pit where the heat of my chi should live. Fear floods me._

_They let go and step back, watching as I fall to my knees before them. Fire Sages. Men of worship and it is me that kneels in an imitation of supplication. The irony is not lost on me. _

_The oldest of them begins to speak. "Everyday you will drink of this to promote virility."_

_Virility? That can't be right. They have poisoned me! My vision swamps for a moment and I fight to keep the contents of my stomach for spilling across the brilliant gold of his silk slippers. For an instant I panic thinking myself dying but then my vision steadies and I can breathe again. He says something, something so unbelievable, that I find myself gaping up, mouth flapping open like a squirrel bass. _

"_This newest prophesy says the Avatar will be born to that of Fire and Water. It is the will of the Phoenix Emperor, Fire Lord Ozai, ruler of all the lands that you lay with the waterbender so that she might bear the next Avatar into this world."_

_I can barely hear him through the buzzing of my ears. I shake my head in denial. I _know_ I _must_ have heard wrong. _

"_You **will** take the waterbender and get her with child. Or both of your lives will be forfeit" he says, frowning at my gesture of refusal._

_Nausea hits again as I think of all the atrocities Ozai will commit with an Avatar at his disposal. From birth he will manipulate and poison, groom the child to be nothing but a tool. A powerful, unstoppable weapon. _

_Everyday will be Sozin's Commet. The power of a hundred suns and moons, mountains and winds, harnessed. Tyranny will be everlasting._

_-_

They leave, taking the cursed cup with them. I gasp shallowly, afraid to wake her. Afraid to be seen like this. So affected.

Weak.

The coals of my inner fire smolder, so close to sputtering out. I watch her sleeping and eventually catch my breath.

She looks so peaceful. The morning sun streaks across the furs and bathes one exposed shoulder in light. She stirs under my gaze, pushing the furs back and stretching, half in shadow half in light. My throat tightens painfully and I wish fiercely that time would stop in this moment.

It does not. It moves ever forward.

She looks at me and smiles sleepily and I can not begin to imagine how I should go about this. Tact and social verbosity have never been my strong suits. But she needs to be told. So I tell her the only way I know how. I open my lips and blurt it all out.

And watch as shock contorts her face.

-

this chapter skip around a bit. the italics are what happened the day before and the chapter before.

the poison bit just came to me as I was writing this chapter. Might have to change everything. Crazy that I have an actual plot. I'm just as surprised as you! lol

so... thoughts, likes, dislikes. i want to hear about them all.


	29. Misunderstood

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko POV..._

**Misunderstood**

I tell her everything. The words like wooden blocks tumbling awkwardly from my lips.

Slowly the smile slides from her lips and her eyes. She looks away from my face.

I watch her hands as I speak. I watch her nimble brown fingers twisting in the faded hem of her tunic. I watch as they go still, her fingers buried in the folds of fabric. Her knuckles are the tense white of the ice that surrounds us.

The last words leave my mouth, echoing in the silence that lies between us. For a long while there is just silence and the loud thud of my heartbeat. Then slowly... tentatively... "...Katara...?"

_Silence._

"Katara? Say something! ... _please_."

"Is this what you want?"

The sudden question catches me by surprise. Her tone is even, her voice serene. Her eyes clear and bottomless.

I can't read her eyes. I don't know...

...she's looking at me as though she doesn't know me. She's looking at me like she did the first time I ever saw her. Her eyes wide, deep, and searching. Like she can see through my bulky armor and puffed out chest, see straight to the scared, weak child inside. She looks like she is doubting me. I feel accused.

It makes me suddenly angry. So I do what I do best. I lash out.

"I don't want this! I could never want something so terrible!"

Real disgust colors my voice as I remember the hard strength of my fathers hands twisting against my shoulder; how powerful that small gesture was, how it could make me _fear_ him.

She recoils from me. Something shuts off in her eyes and before I can know what she is on her feet facing away from me.

"What are you saying."

Her voice is as icy as the temperature around us.

"I... I don't know" now I am uncertain. What does she want to hear? What do I say to make this alright again?

"You think your better than me. Don't you?" Her voice is still even but as she whirls around to face me I see how livid she really is.

"You think a water tribe peasant is _beneath_ you."

"What! No? I never said that!"

"Yes you did! Thats what you think. You can't help it, after all its all you know!" she says with a wide mocking jester to the red flame banner on the wall beside us.

"You would never want to dirty your family _heritage_," she spats the word, "with a mixed blood child."

"No! ... no your wrong. I'm not like that anymore. I don't care about crowns or titles I just want to do what's right. I've changed!"

"YOUR LYING!" she screams.

"You as good as said it when you said you didn't want me." At the words her voice crumples and the hurt she has been holding back floods her eyes. Then she turns in a violent swoosh and runs into the small partitioned bath room.

I am stunned. I understand nothing. I only know this...

...girls are crazy!

* * *

_School is consuming all of my time. And work so doesn't help with that. But summers almost here and I'm determined to finish this story so never fear._


	30. Away

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Katara POV_

**Away**

It childish to cry and run away.

But I suddenly cannot face him.

What he had told me, it made me feel like I was back in the North pole struggling to prove my worth past the width of my hips and evenness of my stitch. It made me feel like I was nothing more than an object to be used at their disposal and tossed aside when their through with me.

Only this time I'm not up against Pakku and his sexist ways. This time I'm up against an enemy that has already defeated me. And I don't know if I have the strength for another fight.

But none of this was shocking. In a way it made sense. The kind of sick sense of a madman atop his golden throne.

What hurt was his _revulsion_, his disgust at the very thought of a child with me. Was I that repulsive?

The way he watched me when he thought I wasn't looking had said otherwise.

But I must have misread, it wouldn't be the first time I think as I remember a tall earth kingdom boy with arching eyebrows and a yellowed strand of grass between his teeth.

I wipe angrily at my eyes and stare down at the dark brown of my skin. I see the way my chest fills out my shirt, the fabric stretched taunt across, the way my hips flare out from my waist.

I am nothing like the slim pale Firenation women of his homeland. I am nothing like the tall petulant _emotionless_ girl with knives and dark energy.

No... I am nothing like that.

But still I had thought... I had_ hoped_... but I was foolish.

"Katara?"

"Go away" I mumble. My eyes are puffy, my nose runny, and if I look as miserable as I feel then the last thing my fragile ego needs is more rejection, especially from him.

"I don't know what I said but I'm sorry. Whatever it was I didn't mean it."

"I know."

For a long moment it is quiet and I think he has gone.

"What you said, about me not wanting you-"

"Forget about it."

"No, listen. I do wa... any guy would be lucky to have you."

I laugh dryly, "Your just saying that".

"No I mean it."

Another long minute passes. I finally turn to face him, not bothering to hide the redness of my eyes.

"Zuko... will you hold me."

He reaches for me. His arms easy and warm around me.

"I'm sorry about before. I needed to be angry at someone. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"It's okay. I understand."

His breath is warm against my neck. A ghostly caress. His easy acceptance loosens my tongue.

"It's strange being here. All I ever thought about was coming back home after it was all over. I'd imagine helping Gran Gran sew the new winter coats and fishing with Socka and everything would go back to the way it was before. Its what kept me sane through everything. But now that I'm here it doesn't feel at all like it should. This used to be my home."

But its not anymore." It is not a question but a confirmation of what I've known all along to be true.

"I don't want to stay here."

"Then we won't."

"Where will we go?"

"Away."

I rest my chin on his shoulder and his arms tighten around me.

I close my eyes and for a time let it all fade away.

* * *

_Who skipped study time to bring you this chapter? Me!_


	31. Goodbye

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Goodbye**

The moon hangs heavy and full in the night sky. A bloated sphere lighting our way.

The sky is cloudless and clear, like the sea before a storm.

We gather the meager packs and strap them to our backs. Zuko straps his broadswords to his back and ties his knife against my calf. The touch of his fingers bring heat to my cheeks, but there is no time to think of such distractions.

It is time for goodbyes.

I _hate_ goodbyes. They always seem so ominous and final.

Jin'g smile is as shaky as my own, but she hugs me tightly and tells me that she is glad for us. That we must seize this chance of freedom. Be happy, she whispers.

I nod wordlessly, my throat wound tight as a clock.

We head across the compound toward the distant peaks of the mountains. A light snow has begun to fall, blanketing our footsteps.

I look back one last time at my home for the last year. The snow falls quicker now, blurring my view. I can feel Zuko beside me and the silent question on his lips.

But I am sure.

I turn back to face my destiny, and let the night swallow me whole. Zuko falls into an easy stride beside me and for the first time I feel myself begin to relax, freedom is just within reach it seems.

A loud voice rings out. **Halt! Who goes there. **

A solider, spear drawn, stands behind us. **Turn around slowly, hands in the air.**

And we have no choice. At the sight of our faces his reaction is immediate. The packs on our backs speak loudly of our intent.

The snow swirls around us, biting at our cheeks and stinging our eyes. I can feel the heat of his skin, even across the ice, I can still feel the solidness of his bones, the jelly of their marrow, and the throb of blood rushing through his veins.

Suddenly I am scared. Not of the solider or the threatening end of his spear, but of my trembling hands held high in front of me and what they might _do_.


	32. Blood

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Blood**

For a frozen moment we can do nothing but stand there.

Then Zuko is pushing me aside and his hands are shoving out in a short fist pump and I watch for the bright burst of flames. Only they never _come_.

Zuko stares at his fists, a surprise replaced with a strange acceptance on his face.

It is than that I begin to realize something is horribly wrong. _Where is his fire?_

The solider, having leapt back in surprise, strikes out with his spear in a sweeping blow striking hard _into_ Zuko's side. Zuko's eyes meet mine in pained surprise. He cries out in stunned pain as the hilt of the soldier's blade meets his skull.

My insides _freeze_ at the sound.

And then he goes limp, crumpling to the ground.

I know that the solider is moving forward towards me.

But I don't care. I don't.

There is blood on the snow, right by his dark head. Spreading under his shoulder. A wet seeping color. There is a great rushing in my ears and rush of heat to my neck. Angry warmth floods my eyes.

He's so still. A moment ago he was moving, _wasn't he?_ Now he's still. And I can't stand it. I can't.

It is far too devastating.

I focus instead on the anger.

I feel my hands fold into gnarled talons.

As he moves forward the terrifying edge of his weapon gleaming through the swirling snow I sense something dark and powerful and terribly seductive. Something stronger and thicker than water. I can _feel_...

My fingers flex reflexively.

_wait_... I tell myself... _almost_

I see, I reach, and I _pull_.

The world explodes.

My check is wet, splattered, and there is a metallic salty taste on the back of my tongue. A taunting _ghost_ of a laughter burns in my ears.

There are two bodies in the snow now.

I turn, vomiting into the snow.

_Congratulations Katara, your a blood-bender..._


	33. Hama

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Hama**

There are two bodies in the snow now and I am alone.

Alone with just the voices in my head. Me and my sick twisted crazy.

The snow is splattered in color.

_Look how pretty_. She purs.

I try to block it out. Try to ignore how my pulse jumps in response because it is pretty in a morbid dark way that colors everything else that it should be. I shouldn't feel awe when I should be feeling... _Oh Tui and La- what have I done?_

The purr turns to steel. _Wonderful vengeance! __And you did it! All of it. _

I shake my head in desperate denial. _No!_

_He deserved it. They all do! You know it._

_... no _

_Yesss. _

I know what this looks like. I know I am slipping.

I make my frozen limbs move. Make myself turn him over and look at what I had done. See that he was drained of life, I had done that. Looked and looked until it had completely sunken in. And then I turned swiftly to the side again and when my stomach was empty I stayed heaving dry hoarse sobs into the snow.

And then I made myself move. Made myself turn over the other body. Made myself ignore how _terrified_ I was. Made myself look even though I didn't want to see anymore. Made myself press snow into the open wounds sealing it as best I could through my shaking hands.

_Let him die. He's one of them. The one's who hurt us. _

_No he's not like that. _

_Let the snow claim what is Her's, leave before another comes for you._

_I'm not leaving without him._

_We should KILL him._

"NO! Leave me alone, go AWAY!"

"Katara? What...?"

_Zuko._ I can breathe again. I can feel the cells in my body swelling with oxygen, my heart contracting in my chest. _Zuko is awake. _

"Nothing. It's nothing."

I am relieved that he doesn't press it, even when his eyes widen at the body in the snow.

We stumble to our feet. The wind whips around us with furious flurry. A blizzard is coming. Yue blesses our journey.

The thought brings me no comfort.

I struggle to hold back the dam inside. I want nothing more than to cry. To let my element sweep me into numbness.

I wait until we make it to the shallow caves at the edge of the mountains. I wait until Zuko's shuddering, huddled body stills, his skin shockingly pale against the dark stone.

I stand outside in the pelting snow until my face is numbed and bruising with cold and then I cry.

The tears come fast and loud. Large sobs that tear their way out of my lips. The howl of the storm drowns out all the noise I make.

My mind is a whirling maelstrom of guilt and terror and worst of all _satisfaction._

_Her voice is silent. I can't stand the silence. _


	34. Stains

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

**Stains**

The newly healed skin is like the cold pink of the great salmon that spring brings. If I close my eyes I can see them now, their great lengths stretched over the fire. The smoky tang fills the air as the meat sizzles and dries. But it is just the charred bits of his tunic that I smell.

Why had he not fire bent? Why did he do nothing? I can see his outstretched hands and his face awash with something, was it surprise? I do not know.

It plagues me, there is something just below the surface. A truth that evades me.

Underneath my nails the thick red bubbles out, twining up my hands, staining them. I close my eyes and will myself to pretend that it is otherwise.

_Your imagining it Katara, your just imagining it. _

I press my face into his warm neck and try not to think of the thrum of blood pulsing there, calling me. I tell myself that it is nothing. That is means nothing.

And despite the great heat of him my tears freeze icy trails between us.


	35. Tremble

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Zuko Pov..._

**Tremble**

White gives way to gray then the beginnings of green. Soon there is grass underfoot and sunshine overhead.

No one comes for us. And I don't know whether to be pleased or worried at this.

The fever that has been poisoning my bones saps my strength. My limbs are as lead, even the weight of my head seems to much for my shoulders. I find my bones have begun to ache, the type of bone weary ache that tells old men cold weather is coming.

I try to hide how exhausted I am, how each step is a struggle and how the last days have taken a toll. I worry that she will notice.

But she has problems of her own.

For the first time I can understand why Sozin would want to wipe out her people. What she can do, it is not probable, it is not _possible._ And yet it is.

I had seen it before, how she could yank a man about like a puppet on strings. But I had never imagined that she could wring a man dry as effortlessly as drawing water from a sieve.

She mumbles in her sleep. Grunts and moans, sounds that make my stomach lurch and curl around my throat. And I can catch the same whispered word over and over. _Hama. _

Her fingers dig into the grass turning them shriveled and yellow and I try to still the trembling of my heart.


	36. Hunger

**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

_Katara POV..._

_

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**Hunger**

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**

The village is small, nothing more than a collection of huts in a dusty clearing. But I am happy to see it. The few people outside stare at us with open suspicion bordering on hostility and Zuko ducks his head further underneath his hood.

The inn is little more than a glorified shack but I am thrilled at the thought of sleeping a night off the dirt, even if it is only on a straw pallet. We pay for a room and buy watery soup and a loaf that is more crust than bread from the woman at the front who bares her yellowed teeth at us in what I think must be a smile. Both of our stomachs choose that moment to growl loudly and we share our own uneasy smile.

We had run out of food three days ago, or even before as Zuko continually insisted he was not hungry. Although to see him now and the way he inhales this food I think he only said such a thing for my benefit so that I would take his portion. Heat rises to my cheeks and I look away quickly as he catches my gaze over our bowls.

He had taken to watching me in a strange way. Like he has never seen me before. Like beneath my skin and teeth and eyes there is another someone. I didn't know whether to meet his gaze boldly or blush and look away. It seemed like I was doing too much of the latter.

His gaze seemed hotter, seemed to sear right through my bones to their very marrow. But the unsteady way he took to his feet makes me frown. I had told myself that it was hunger that made his feet drag and his eyes unsteady. The nagging worry that has been prodding me all this time, the feeling that something is _wrong_, returns.

I throw an arm underneath his shoulder, even as he tries to shrug it off, and am surprised by the warmth of him. It seems unnatural, even for a firebender. I am acutely aware of his entire length pressed against my side. Such a simple thing, to help him up the stairs, and yet it seems so achingly personal.

His eyes are glazed and little shivers pass all through him as I lay him down on the only straw pallet in the tiny room. I freeze the remaining water from my skins and press it against his forehead, his cheeks, his neck.

And then there is nothing to do but sleep. I stare up at the ceiling and wait.

My eyes are just beginning to close, lulled by both exhaustion and the pleasent warmth in my belly, when the sound of splintering wood jerks me awake. I sweep the ice compress and moisture off Zuko and it joins the rest of the water from my skins into my agitated hands. But the face that comes through the door gives me pause. I am frozen in shock, in disbelief.

Because he is dead, _isn't he? _

My hesitation is enough for him to bring the blunt end of his sword to my temple. I fall to my knees and as the floor rushes up to meet me the last thing I see is my element puddling around me.

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_Forgot to say... thanks for over 100 reviews! woot you guys rock!_


	37. Traitor

**ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ****ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ****ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! **

**This is NOT a new chapter. The new chapters are ch. 3 (Forward) and ch. 5 (North). Also chapters 1 through 5 have been edited. I hope to get new chapters to you all soon! But hey quality over quantity right?**

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**Shell Shock**

_Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep._

* * *

Traitor

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Murky distorted light.

Rough woven threads, scratching my cheek. Obscuring my vision.

Frowning, I reach for the offending material. Shoulders jerk and a constricting line bruises into my wrists.

Why are my hands tied?_ Coiled rope, its fibers curiously soft and hard underneath my nail. _Where am I?_The smell of maple mixed with saw dust. The Inn. A set of stairs. _Who...?_ Zuko smiling at me over dinner. _Faint voices._ Zuko leaning against me, his breathe warm against my neck. _Prickle of straw against my legs._ Dark hair smooth in my fingers... Zuko's hair... _no not Zuko's_. Dark hair and arched eyebrows... lips always laughing_... HIM!

It all comes back in a rush sending spiraling heat to my injured aching head. I force myself to breathe slowly, trying to think, trying not to panic. Because the dead always stay dead.. _don't they? _

_Ribs splintered, lungs pierced. _I felt him dying, felt where the rock had crushed his chest, felt his heart slowing, his blood cooling underneath my hands... _didn't I?_

My jaw aches and my tongue works idly at the knotted cloth. My head pounds a dreadful heated pulse and I push down rising panic and try once again to free my hands. If only I could see, I think.

As if they could hear my thoughts hands push me to my knees and I blink rapidly at the blinding light.

We are still in the same room. Same walls and floor and door. Zuko's still lying there on the straw pallet. And on either side are a man and women dressed in the dark greens and dusty browns of the forest. The man wears a wide brimmed hat that sits low on his face and I can only see the hard thin line of his mouth. The woman caresses the curved spine of her dagger, her agitated hands a direct contrast from the stone stillness of the rest of her. Two lines of red bleed out from the corners of her mouth.

I try to shrug the hand off my shoulder and am rewarded with a harsh shove and my hands twist behind my back, struggling to find balance. I slam into the floor hard, only rolling in time to land on my right shoulder, spearing pain against my spine. I cry out sharply, the sound muffle through the gag.

His laugh rings out and I grit my teeth at the sound of it. Crouching down his fingers grip my chin and I meet his eyes with mine.

I almost quail under his hard stare, sharp and brittle. I almost... because the air is dry and dusty, and even with my hands tied- palms pressed painfully together I _know_ there is not a drop of moisture in the air.

I think instead of what he has done, _what he has tried to do._ I think of what I did when I had the first bits of my innocence crushed and the river at my back. I gather up all the broken scattered pieces of me and glare back with all the heat I have left in me.

Spits the straw from his lips and hisses, _hisses at me_. "_TRAITOR." _Jerks his head, his neck, his hand, like an angry coiled snake.

They drag him up. Head limp and forward. Grasp his bangs jerking his head back. Expose the ruined skin. Expose the damning mark.

He whispers it again, his lips brushing my ear in the mockery of a caress that send a chill of dread down my spine, _"__Traitor". _

_Jet knows._


End file.
